Office Equal Opportunity News

Diversity Spotlight: Information Technology (IT)

The Office of Equal Opportunity is sponsoring a Diversity Spotlight series aimed at highlighting the work of our departments within the City as it relates to their diversity efforts. This month’s featured department is Information Technology (IT).

Information Technology (IT) consists of Infrastructure Management, Application Management, Service Desk, Project Management Office, Governance and Compliance and Service Portfolio Management. We continue to work towards a good representation of ethnicity, cultural backgrounds, and gender. There is a wide variety of range of experience, age scale and educational background in place which adds another layer of diverse viewpoints and experiences. The diversity introduced by all these factors provides an environment of varying perspectives to daily operations and targeted problem-solving.

IT serves a broad and diverse customer base which includes the departments of both General Government and GRU. Though IT’s customer base is internal, we are keenly aware of our impact on the citizens of Gainesville and the customers of GRU and likewise feel a great sense of responsibility to our community.

The focus areas for IT’s diversity plan are as follows:

RECRUITMENT: IT has three primary focuses for recruitment.

Attract a diverse candidate pool in all hiring processes - IT actively demonstrates their commitment to attract a diverse candidate pool in all hiring processes. We actively seek to advertise with organizations that increase the diversity of the candidate pool such as the National Association for Professional Women, Blacks in Technology, Women in Technology, IT Diversity Careers and DICE.

Emphases on educational partnerships – Partnerships help raise the visibility of available opportunities in GRU’s IT Department.

Participation in local job or career fair events-IT attends many of the local job or career fair events sponsored by the City, the Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Career Source and local colleges. This provides another outlet to overview the opportunities in IT to potential candidates.

SELECTION: IT assures all opportunities are objective and carried out in an open, fair, and competitive environment. Diversity is present on hiring panels bringing a well-rounded perspective to the selection process.

DEVELOPMENT: We place a priority on investing in team members to prepare them for the rapidly changing industry in which they work. The investment in professional development ensures each member has the needed skills to be successful in their current assignments while growing their skillsets to prepare them for future opportunity.

LEADERSHIP: The IT leadership team is committed to the value of diversity and recognizes the unique contribution made by each team member to ensure the department’s success. It is the goal of the IT Diversity Plan to exemplify the opportunities throughout IT for the current team members as well as future members joining the team.